


Rain on a Strange Roof

by jonasnightingale



Series: Roan Lives [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Clarke Griffin & Roan Friendship, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Miller and Clarke were childhood friends fight me, Multi, Roan Lives (The 100), Sanctum (The 100), The 100 (TV) Season 7 Speculation, ace Roan, apology tour, clarke needs a hug, how does one tag, no beta we die like men, pan Murphy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24771091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonasnightingale/pseuds/jonasnightingale
Summary: Sanctum cost a lot. With the gaping holes in her once-family and the remnants of Josie’s trauma clinging to her temples, Clarke wonders if she can ever make this place a home for Madi. But there’s one thing Sanctum has returned her - a fallen king, a lost friend. With Roan beside her the weight of this planets dues don’t sit quite so heavy. When she’s no leader or Commander of Death, when he’s no King, who are they? What can they salvage from their wreckage?
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Echo, Charmaine Diyoza & Clarke Griffin, Clarke Griffin & John Murphy, Clarke Griffin & Madi, Clarke Griffin & Nathan Miller, Clarke Griffin & Roan, Echo & Roan (The 100), Eric Jackson/Nathan Miller, Gaia & Clarke Griffin, Octavia Blake & Clarke Griffin
Series: Roan Lives [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1424269
Comments: 13
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

She doesn’t feel brittle with him. Doesn’t feel the weight of a thousand missteps and impossible choices quite so keenly. He’s been on Sanctum for only a handful of hours and already the weight of him beside her makes the breath come a little easier. But she’s bracing for the inevitable confrontation; for the reaction of Skaikru when they see him. She wishes, not for the first time, that Bellamy was here. 

They’d sent Miller and Indra to the ship to awake a few trusted Wonkru for help in building their settlement. Miller had covertly granted her this favour with only a grateful nod exchanged between them on the return. For just a moment he was the boy she’d chased around cold metal corners during council meetings; then he was marching the new team off to Raven for instructions, again a soldier who no longer followed her. Indra tailed after them with only a cryptic look thrown to Clarke and a minute nod towards the fallen King. 

Clarke led him in silence to the concealed hilltop outside the camp, throwing off her jacket and dropping to the grass as he took in the view. And then she spoke, of Sanctum, of Eligius and Wonkru, of the Anomaly, of Primes. And he watched with only the slightest tilt to his head, taking in every word she said with the unflinching gaze of a warrior, a leader. When she finished the tale -skirting over the details of Josephine, the dark fact of Murphy’s betrayal, the pain of Madi’s transition with blanks and vaguities she’s sure he noticed - she gives into the deep sigh. Let’s her hand rub at her temple where the dull ache has returned. There’s another beat of his mind piecing it all together, his eyes tracking the changes in the girl before him, and then he throws her a gruff half smile, “It’s always something with you isn’t it?”. 

It catches her off guard and the burst of laughter that bubbles out of her takes her by surprise. She can’t remember the last time she had cause for laughter; Eden she supposes. She meets his eyes with a crinkle around her own and gives him a light shrug, “Yeah, I guess so.”

In the end it plays out pretty much how she expected come nightfall. Echo spots them the moment they’re through the door. She freezes in an instant, sending Raven crashing straight into her with the sudden halt. Raven blurts out a “What the hell, Echo?!” before following her gaze and Clarke can almost see the fire in her eyes ignite, the shift from fond exasperation to rage. She’s storming towards them with her meal tray gripped viciously beside her, voice octaves and decibels higher, she repeats “WHAT THE HELL?!” Clarke’s between the King and the approaching cyclone of hurt, with her fingers wrapped around the knife raised near her bosom. When Raven stops just short of her, eyes flicking to the weapon, Clarke feels the chasm between them yawn even wider, feels the tentative bridges they had made crumbling. She’s not sure she’ll survive another loss, but she reasons that really, she never got Raven back to begin with; it’s an ache she’s worn before. Clarke catalogs the silence around them, the complete stagnation of life in the mess hall, she catches Raven’s fingers drifting towards the gun in her belt, tries to reason with a steady “Raven” - a warning, a plea, an explanation. Instead the brunette pushes further forward, her eyes pinned harshly to Clarkes, almost a dare. Then there’s the breath of another person behind her, a movement at Clarke’s back that has Raven take a stumbling step away. Echo. The spy is between the fallen leaders, haunting eyes glued on Raven, hands pushing Roan back behind her. Loyalties run deep. 

And then it’s over. Raven throwing her tray down and storming from the room. Emori rushing after her. A collective exhale of breath from the diners around them. Echo turns to Roan, meets his eyes with a raised chin. She’s not the girl he banished anymore, but the Ring gave her six years to think about family and she won’t fail him again. There’s a tense moment between them before Roan thrusts his arm towards her and she meets his grasp with a warm squeeze of his forearm. And then she’s gone, following after Raven and Emori in silence. Roan seems perfectly unfazed by the whole thing and saunters towards the meal counter, looking back at her to ask “so what’s good?” 

Murphy drops his plate with a clatter to their table, falls into the seat beside Clarke. She thinks it’s his own kind of penance, trying to make up for all he did, for all he knows. She almost feels bad for throwing another bomb into his attempts at pulling her back into the fold. His eyes skate over the old King, again admiring the scars adorning his face, before grumbling out “Guess we’ve got another Cockroach on the team now.” And he can see from the corner of his eye Clarke release the breath she was holding, see her release some of the tension from her spine as she slumps to continue her meal. He sees Roan clock the same things, watches as the confused ridge between his brows smooths into something softer. “Seems like it.” 

Raven sets them on scouting, a mission to get them out of her camp. And Clarke welcomes the break from the sharp glares the adhoc leader throws their way, from the wide berth Wonkru gives them. She almost scoffs when Raven assigns Miller as their guard - they all know he’s there to keep an eye on them, not to protect, but there’s a flex to Miller’s loyalties that Raven fails to acknowledge. Once upon a time he would have followed Roan. In a different world there would have been five years in a bunker with Roan at the throne, Clarke and Octavia beside him, Miller watching their backs. Her eyes flick to Madi talking at Roan a mile a minute in trig - but in that world there would be no Madi. She wraps her arm around the young girl and leans towards her ear, giving her a squeeze as she says, “You’re still not coming with us.” Gaia moves to stand beside the girl as Clarke dons her pack, uttering a soft “I will watch over her.” Clarke finds herself almost responding “you always do” before catching her tongue. She’ll have time to dissect that instinct on the trek ahead. Instead she pulls Gaia into a tight hug before depositing a kiss on Madi’s crown. Jackson’s there to farewell Miller and when she turns to look their way he throws a small wave her way. Another development she’ll try to not dissect in the uncertain days ahead.

The camp fades behind them and Clarke finds herself relaxing with every mile covered, falling into the magic of discovery. Miller’s grip on his gun loosens as they go. Roan lets his fingers trail over foreign barks and sniffs at strange flowers. Between them is mostly silence, but it’s not the loaded overbearing silence of camp, there’s something familiar in the way it falls. They chart the terrain in Clarke’s notebook, filling the pages with data and maps amidst her usual sketches. The animals they encounter drawn amongst images from her life, scattering around smiling teenagers or the ruins of Earth. Miller likes to look at her pictures when she’s distracted. And if he notices that some of them are not own memories - men with dogtags on motorbikes, colourful lanterns across busy streets - he doesn’t mention it. 

They set up the radiation tent just in case but after so many years trapped inside none of them likes to use it. So they sleep outside, watching the foreign stars make shapes above them. Miller hums on watch, and though there are scars that tear open at the sound, it grounds her when she closes her eyes and lets the dark succumb. She still awakens scarcely an hour later with a scream on her lips, but the men leave her her pride and simply hand her a mug of tea. After all, they all have memories to keep them up at night; they’re getting accustomed to each others traumas. Roan stares into the flames, transfixed by some thought or time beyond her, and Miller does a little boogie on the way back to his post, and Clarke thinks for the first time since landing on this moon that maybe she can find peace here.


	2. Chapter 2

Her fingers sketch the firelight bouncing off their faces, capturing the shadows thrown beneath Roans scars, the healed cut poking out from the neck of Miller’s tee. She thinks Wells would be proud of this moment; Monty too. And for the first time the passing thought of them doesn’t stop her breathing. Her eyes return to the boys asleep before her, her charcoal catching the tension in Roan’s arm leading to fingers clutched in Miller’s shirt, the gentle sway of his hair as Miller breathes in and out. 

They’d been gone two weeks. The terse silences had given way to chatter; stories exchanged, jokes groaned at. She’d been teaching them Mandarin (thank you Josephine) and Miller had in exchange got them to memorise some basic Korean. They had learnt the shape of each others scars, arms bare in the heat of two suns, and the weight of each others habits - like the swagger Miller marched forth with, the shapes Roan whittled without thought, the fingers tapping on Clarke’s forearm. 

One week in Roan had dropped down beside Clarke to break her from a familiar nightmare, rough hands cupping her face as he tried to coax her out. A tear leaking from behind her eyelids, she had rolled into his warmth, being awoken hours later only by the first rays of sunlight glittering around her. More sleep than she’d had in months. So from then on they’d set camp with the three bedrolls side by side. The body heat didn’t suck, but the camaraderie was better. They got to know the groan and stretch Miller would wake up with, the low rattle of a snore that pushed evenly between Roans lips, the searching hand Clarke would unconsciously reach with in the night. They got to know each others nightmares too. The jolt up that Roan would come to with, eyes bright; the shake Miller would give his head before running a weary hand down his face; the eyes flung open and head searching side to side that would follow Clarkes. They pretended not to hear the names that came with each nightmare - Bryan, Jasper, Echo, Octavia, Madi, Luna, Monty, Bellamy, Lexa… A litany of disappointments and terrors. 

They got to know the land around them until it was like second nature to side-step certain vines or snag yellow berries as the passed bushes. With Gabriel’s book as a guide they had had no particularly nasty encounters with the vegetation. They found sturdy timber that could be used for construction, a wide lake that could provide water, and even what looked like a town on the horizon. They’d spotted its lights last night and were spending the day trekking towards it. 

The impending human contact put a stop to their cheerful banter. Too many what-ifs playing on their minds. Miller’s grasp on his gun was again tense and ready and Roan had started using trees for cover as they went along. Yet they still caught Clarke each time her feet stumbled beneath her. Another idiosyncrasy they had learnt along the way. 

She’d managed to hide the dizzy spells, the headaches only a few days; Roan and Miller had always been too observant and their living situation left her no where to hide. The nosebleeds didn’t help her denials either. They grabbed her arms to keep her upright, forced her by her shoulders to sit when she looked on the verge of passing out, handed her moss they secretly stowed in their pockets when a nosebleed was particularly nasty, but they didn’t say anything. Sure Roan would throw confused glances her way, like she was a riddle he could not solve, but he let her keep this secret. Miller was the worry, the panic in his eyes barely restrained; she could practically feel him making a mental tally to return to Jackson. 

With the lights of town now easily distinguished they set up camp in a small cave. No fire tonight, they wouldn’t risk the attention. They had decided it best to wait until morning to make their unannounced arrival. And by that, I mean Clarke and Roan had had a session of verbal table tennis about it which culminated in Miller offering a nonchalant shrug and dropping his pack. It all felt painfully familiar to Clarke. 

With Miller on watch in the caves mouth and its small belly explored, Clarke dropped beside Roan where he sat flipping through her sketches. She watched his face in profile, the sharp drop of his nose, the flecks of grey peppering his beard. There were stories on those pages that were merely whispers on the wind to him, tales overheard in trading posts or around battle firepits. But there were others that belonged to him too; Polis, Lexa, Echo, Alie’s lab. His eyes always lingered on them longest, and she knew by now which pictures would have him trace a finger down the page - Lexa applying her warpaint, hair cascading around her and eyes steeled; Luna laughing with sunlight streaming on her, the off-shore home of Flourkru behind; Echo, face tormented through a hazmat suit helmet. Echo was always the longest lingered on. He’d gasped the first time he’d seen himself reflected in her pages, stared at the detailed sketching of his barely contained amusement beneath the crown, hair loose and eyes warm. There were others too, he clean and leaning against a doorframe in the lab, him sprawled at Lexa’s feet as she declared him King, a large sketch of him deep in thought, hands clasped before him. 

She ran her fingers through his matted hair, earning a sharp head turn and quirked eyebrow which she met with a blunt “You look like a mess”. The chuckle that reverberated from him was deep, “You recall how you looked when we first met, Wanheda? Dirty red dreds practically to your waist?” She rolled her eyes at him and he grinned, but shifted down ever so slightly so she could continue her ministrations. She untangled the mess, drawing pieces together to leave even braids along his temples. The pattern of her fingers was a comfort, a fond reminiscence to days in Eden with Madi chatting on her lap, and to before that, to teaching Fox how to braid in the dropship while waiting out a storm. 

When she was done she sat back to admire her work, a softness overtaking her features as she looked at him. They’d been through so much, sometimes it hit her how grateful she was for these small moments. She knew that tomorrow when they entered the village they would present a fierce image, all primed reflexes and sharp eyes. She knew what they looked like as a unit; a backbone you could build civilisation on, shoulders to carry the extinction of a world. They did not look soft. But with Roans hair finally pulled back from his face and Miller swaying his torso to some music only he could hear, she hoped that this new world would give them more time to be soft, to be just people. She hoped that, even if they hadn’t earned it, perhaps this world would just give them a damn break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **shrugs**


	3. Chapter 3

He’d never thought of Clarke as small. Even when they were children, her hiding behind him during sad film scenes, she had always commanded space. And then on earth, no one would dare think her anything but mighty (except maybe annoying). She was all standing at the drop-ship doors with blood down her face and gun firing in the air; she was yelling in Bellamy’s face; she was ordering them about and breaking free and irradiating mountains and elbow deep in peoples wounds. She could not be small. She could not be fragile. She was the commander of death, she could not be a mere mortal. So he hadn’t noticed it, that she was so petite. When she slept curled into him, she took so little of the space Jackson did. When she tumbled over her own feet (a new alarming development she refused to speak of), it took so little to pull her back up. Miller had never had to take care of Clarke in the way he had Octavia, but now, with her shaking beside him and his fingers rubbing soothingly across the catalogue of scars on her back, he wishes he had done more. He lets his fingers brush over the freshly cut hair - trimmed back to just past her ears - and smiles. She had handed him her knife earlier, bared her throat to him, and asked this small task. And when it was done, just long enough to tuck behind her ear, just long enough to conceal the scar on her neck, she’d grinned and run her fingers through it - “Josephine would hate it.” In that moment he saw her how Jackson did; obstinate, head-strong, cheeky. It reminded him of unity day and her small grin during drinking games. They didn’t talk about her much - he and Jackson - because it had become too hard to reconcile the pieces they knew of Clarke; it seemed as if they each cared for a different person and somewhere in the middle was the truth of her.

**

When they had walked into the town in the early morning sunlight, people didn’t run as they would have on Earth. A small child was pulled from their path by a nearby adult but other than that people didn’t cow - just watched with peaked curiosity. They were quite the image, a united front of strength and power marching into the quiet streets. And the town had received them well, their Minister welcoming them with cakes and coffee. That had been two days ago and between the tours and the history lessons they had agreed to a peace treaty. The communities would coexist in peace. They would discuss trade options once the new compound and its inhabitants were further settled. They all felt a weight lifted off their shoulders as Clarke and Roan shook Minister Sutton’s hand- peace.

The town’s children were fascinated by Roan. They had been hesitant at first, the sheer bulk of him a frightening form, until someone had said he looked just like Gaston from the book and all the little girls swooned. They grouped on his periphery, chattering with giggles. Miller watched amused as he passed between buildings. Whilst Roan had been digging through the Archives, he had spent most of his day in the Med Bay with Clarke, gleaning any information he could pass on to Jackson. He looked at the shiny complex work stations they utilised and felt immensely proud of what Clarke and the Wonkru medics had accomplished with their rudimentary supplies - keeping them alive had been no easy task. He was sure he could never forget Clarke operating in the dropship as that storm caused wreckage around them, hands slick with blood; or poking her fingers into Octavia’s arm to pull out the sand worm in a flimsy tent with swords pointed at her. Looking around at the many machines he hoped he would never have to again comfort Jackson as the defeated man whispered things like “if only we had had”. 

Clarke grinned at Roan where he was leaning. He looked so jarring in the new clothes Sutton had gifted them; the clean white shirt making his features pop, the black pants hugging tightly to his legs. The trappings of this town had been a very welcome surprise; the hot baths, the comfortable beds, the full meals. It was almost a shame to be leaving tomorrow, but they were a whole week beyond their expected return date and certain Madi and Jackson would be going mad with worry. Clarke was currently executing complex grounder braids into the hair of a little red haired girl who stuttered whenever Clarke asked her a question. There was a whole group of them who wanted the braids and Clarke let their childhood gossip wash over her as her fingers moved deftly. She glanced at Roan again where his amusement was barely kept in check - soaking in the scene of Wanheda in a clean blue jumpsuit surrounded by babbling children - “You could help you know.” He rolled his eyes but uncrossed his arms to come sit beside her, motioning for the next kid in line. It was exactly how Miller found them an hour later, and he had never wished so much for a camera.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from William C. Faulkner - “How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”
> 
> I haven't seen any of Season 7. Always in denial about Roan's death. And yes I have a whole mental backstory for how he's there.


End file.
